Aqua Mans method to cure root rot (live systems only)

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Aqua Man

Aqua Man

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So figured its about time to make a thread i can reference for those seeking a solution to root rot.

First let's go over some facts. Root rot is not temperature dependent there are many different types pythium that survive and thrive at various temps.

Second it is not caused by anaerobic conditions. However anaerobic conditions cause damage to the roots and make it more susceptible as will any plant that is unhealthy or stressed.

Root damage makes a plant very susceptible to pathogens so overly violent bubbling etc can actually do harm.

Use of either a sterile system or live system is a must in prevention. If your not doing one or the other you are very likely to have root issues.

Water level is important. I almost always see grower with an infection above the waterline. Contrary to popular belief you can run the net pot submerged (i dont). What is this madness Aqua Man you say? Let me explain...

So when we first introduce a plant to our systems they are generally started in a soil, starter plug of some kind etc. The roots are slightly different when grown in soil and water. As this plant grows thw roots that hit the water change in structure and adapt to being fully submerged. Once this happens you can raise the water up the net pot. However I don't do this. 1" below the net pot is where I stay. The bubbles breaking the surface will keep the root and net pot moist enough the prevent issue with damage from air pruning. Even notice the roots in the water are always brighter white? Thats why. If you are not getting the contact of the res solution to the roots above the water and in the hydroton then your not getting the beneficial bacteria, enzymes or h2o2 thier either and that were you see the infection start most times.

So next is the use of enzymes and bacteria. This is not only how we prevent but also cure root rot.

Enzymes will greatly help cleanup of the roots. Quickly eating up any root shedding or decay. This helps eliminate any food source for thw pythoum to take hold.

Beneficial bacteria... the specific species we are looking for is bacillus amyloliquefaciens D747. Several products on the market contain this. Raw bloom microbes, hydrogaurd, southern ag fungicide and plenty more. Counts may vary from what they list so I recommend hydrogaurd or southern AG fungicide. This bacteria species has been used for decades in big AG for exactly the same reason.... pythium, damping off, organic fungicide that actually works extremely well.

So we have root rot how do we get rid of it.

1. First you need the bacteria.

Southern AG fungicide should be used at 1 ml per 20 gal in hydro.

Hydrogaurd I believe is 2ml per gal.

2. take the plant in the netpot out of the system. You can put it in another pail of temp adjusted water.

Then do a full res change adding back the doses of bacteria i listed above.

3. Take the plant to the sink and use temp adjusted water and sprayer to rinse the roots. Massage them with your fingers gently. Don't be afraid to see some roots break off they are usually the most damage and decaying. Get every bit of slime off the roots as this is what suffocating the roots and is actually a mass of bacteria. The chlorine will aid in killing the pythium.

4 place the plant back into the fresh system. Then mix up a double dose of your bacteria with DISTILLED WATER. You want about 1 litre so can mix up 1 gal and that will last you the treatment. Pour i litre of this over the hydroton trying to cover everything. This is going to re inoculate the hydroton and roots in it and let the bacteria go to work.

5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 for 4 days. No matter how the roots look. Make sure each time to re inoculate the hydroton as you will be rinsing it each day so important to pour that litre over the top.

6. Now you should be in the clear and going forward your going to want to pour some res water once a week over thw hydroton to keep it inoculated and bonus rinse and salt buildup out.

Thats it... its that simple... and it works.
 
Last edited:
Bean_Boy

Bean_Boy

129
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So figured its about time to make a thread i can reference for those seeking a solution to root rot.

First let's go over some facts. Root rot is not temperature dependent there are many different types pythium that survive and thrive at various temps.

Second it is not caused by anaerobic conditions. However anaerobic conditions cause damage to the roots and make it more susceptible as will any plant that is unhealthy or stressed.

Root damage makes a plant very susceptible to pathogens so overly violent bubbling etc can actually do harm.

Use of either a sterile system or live system is a must in prevention. If your not doing one or the other you are very likely to have root issues.

Water level is important. I almost always see grower with an infection above the waterline. Contrary to popular belief you can run the net pot submerged (i dont). What is this madness Aqua Man you say? Let me explain...

So when we first introduce a plant to our systems they are generally started in a soil, starter plug of some kind etc. The roots are slightly different when grown in soil and water. As this plant grows thw roots that hit the water change in structure and adapt to being fully submerged. Once this happens you can raise the water up the net pot. However I don't do this. 1" below the net pot is where I stay. The bubbles breaking the surface will keep the root and net pot moist enough the prevent issue with damage from air pruning. Even notice the roots in the water are always brighter white? Thats why. If you are not getting the contact of the res solution to the roots above the water and in the hydroton then your not getting the beneficial bacteria, enzymes or h2o2 thier either and that were you see the infection start most times.

So next is the use of enzymes and bacteria. This is not only how we prevent but also cure root rot.

Enzymes will greatly help cleanup of the roots. Quickly eating up any root shedding or decay. This helps eliminate any food source for thw pythoum to take hold.

Beneficial bacteria... the specific species we are looking for is bacillus amyloliquefaciens D747. Several products on the market contain this. Raw bloom microbes, hydrogaurd, southern ag fungicide and plenty more. Counts may vary from what they list so I recommend hydrogaurd or southern AG fungicide. This bacteria species has been used for decades in big AG for exactly the same reason.... pythium, damping off, organic fungicide that actually works extremely well.

So we have root rot how do we get rid of it.

1. First you need the bacteria.

Southern AG fungicide should be used at 1 ml per 20 gal in hydro.

Hydrogaurd I believe is 2ml per gal.

2. take the plant in the netpot out of the system. You can put it in another pail of temp adjusted water.

Then do a full res change adding back the doses of bacteria i listed above.

3. Take the plant to the sink and use temp adjusted water and sprayer to rinse the roots. Massage them with your fingers gently. Don't be afraid to see some roots break off they are usually the most damage and decaying. Get every bit of slime off the roots as this is what suffocating the roots and is actually a mass of bacteria. The chlorine will aid in killing the pythium.

4 place the plant back into the fresh system. Then mix up a double dose of your bacteria with DISTILLED WATER. You want about 1 litre so can mix up 1 gal and that will last you the treatment. Pour i litre of this over the hydroton trying to cover everything. This is going to re inoculate the hydroton and roots in it and let the bacteria go to work.

5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 for 4 days. No matter how the roots look. Make sure each time to re inoculate the hydroton as you will be rinsing it each day so important to pour that litre over the top.

6. Now you should be in the clear and going forward your going to want to pour some res water once a week over thw hydroton to keep it inoculated and bonus rinse and salt buildup out.

Thats it... its that simple... and it works.
Thanks for taking the hearsay out of the SAG fungicide. It's really difficult to find any concrete info on it online
 
Grapefruitroop

Grapefruitroop

474
93
Thanks for the Tips!!!
Im almost ready to set my recirculating res for F&D... found some Bacillus Amyloliquefacens , but i was wondering if adding enzymes to the res will cause any major ph shifts?
Also...do you see benefit in adding a mix of Bacillus subtilis/megaterium, Saccaromyces and B. Thurigensis Israeliensis?
Im asking cause i try to buy only products and nutes that are targeted for farmers, and i found a pond cleaner that is a two part product...one powdered part A incoculum of those bacterias and a liquid part B called "Enzymatic activator"... they are supposed to go togheter even doh i dont see the harm in just using the enzymes ..
Also do u know why the enzymes are called "activators" of bacterias? i dont understand the relation...
I guess its time to do some researches! 🤪
Ah anyone knows what are the secret ingredients of the General Hydro Florakleen or Freshkleen whatever they call it?
my general knowledge says "Secret ingredients = Secret Ripoff"😂😂
💚
 
Aqua Man

Aqua Man

26,480
638
Thanks for the Tips!!!
Im almost ready to set my recirculating res for F&D... found some Bacillus Amyloliquefacens , but i was wondering if adding enzymes to the res will cause any major ph shifts?
Also...do you see benefit in adding a mix of Bacillus subtilis/megaterium, Saccaromyces and B. Thurigensis Israeliensis?
Im asking cause i try to buy only products and nutes that are targeted for farmers, and i found a pond cleaner that is a two part product...one powdered part A incoculum of those bacterias and a liquid part B called "Enzymatic activator"... they are supposed to go togheter even doh i dont see the harm in just using the enzymes ..
Also do u know why the enzymes are called "activators" of bacterias? i dont understand the relation...
I guess its time to do some researches! 🤪
Ah anyone knows what are the secret ingredients of the General Hydro Florakleen or Freshkleen whatever they call it?
my general knowledge says "Secret ingredients = Secret Ripoff"😂😂
💚
Enzymes shouldn't affect the ph... maybe some foaming. I dont see a benefit to the others... maybe B. Thurigensis as a foliar? Never used it
 
Last edited:
Pippins

Pippins

74
33
I grow and breed peppers outdoors each year, and since I live in the northern latitudes, I have to start them indoors early and plant them outside as soon as the chance of frost is over. Well, last year was bizarre, we had more early rain than I've ever seen and it lasted weeks with is also unusual. I planted 100 pepper seedlings out right before a two week period of rain, having stupidly not checked the weather forecast. About ten days into it, I noticed leaves started dropping, a few days later every plant was affected-I believe it was root rot spread by a pathogenic bacteria through the water. Like Aqua, I've had great success in the past with Southern Ag Biological Fungicide, so I ordered some with two day delivery, and immediately drenched the entire bed with it, as well as sprayed the plants. At this time 90% of the plants had lost every single leaf-they were just sad little twigs-I thought they were done for, but two weeks later, every single plant but one had regrown leaves and were thriving. I use Southern Ag on EVERY seedling, no matter what kind of plant, indoors and out, and I reapply regularly, both root drench and foliar, and I've NEVER had any kind of fungal issue after starting that.
 
TheBioMaster

TheBioMaster

450
93
Good information!

I would only add that the is way more than just the D747 strain that has been identified to be used in conjunction with root development, etc.

There are over 12 "Super Strains" identified of bacteria alone plus the fungi species.

You won't find these in the cheap products, or "bargain" deals....lol!

It kills me to see farmers spend thousands on a light, but only 5 bucks on the cheapest nutrients and supplements they can find!!
 
Grapefruitroop

Grapefruitroop

474
93
You won't find these in the cheap products, or "bargain" deals....lol!
Do you mean the stuff that they sell at the hardware stores o nurseries that sells commercial stuff for retired seniors? I agree that 100% low grade stuff...but if you check where real commercial farmers get their inoculants, and nutrients etc...than , another world opens to your eyes of high quality product at very cheap price...
Its not about beein cheap its about get for what you are payng.
Everything has a cost, and quality its the only thing that justify the cost...
Cannabis targeted products are a scam, you may take some off this list but the whole market is a scam..
From the site i was lookin at i could get 2 pounds of B A. D747 for 60$...Prolly a lifetime supply cause the dosage is 1.5grams x 100 liters...😧
 
Grapefruitroop

Grapefruitroop

474
93
The brand im talkin about its called Amylo-X WG
Bacillus amyloliquefaciens subsp. Plantarum
strain D747, 25% (5x1010 UFC/g)
made by Certis
 
QuarterbackMo

QuarterbackMo

810
93
Man this is a really good post they should put this in a hydro bible.

Bear with me here this is a long post but a very informative one I’m about to make here. There’s a long story attached to it but if you’re having these problems I suggest reading to the end you will be surprised and also you will see why I’m posting it here after reading the op.

I’ve been growing in these systems for a long long long time now and was successful for over a decade, never lost a plant once then all of a sudden they started dropping like crazy.

I started in dwc and moved to UC and then to a custom rdwc / uc hybrid I made which started as a recirculating drip line top feed right into the net pots at the plant base. Now I had changed a few things over the time such as instead of putting drip lines right into the net pots I just piped them to the top of the bucket so they dropped in like a waterfall with the idea it’s moving the solution faster and the crash is creating more d.o., stopped using hydroguard out of fear the bacteria would turn anaerobic because I do 3 week cycles on my nutes to flush, added stronger air pumps and all these little custom tweaks I put into motion and honestly everything was going great until one day I unplugged my air pumps ( I use co2 they are in their own room) and forgot to plug it back in for two weeks didn’t even notice it until it was too late.

Before you know it every plant in my room dropped so when I saw what happened it was obvious this incident was caused by the air pump being off. Sucks for me but I cleaned with bio green and bleached everything and then did a super over powered h202 flush before I ran the next round which ultimately made it 2 weeks then dropped out of nowhere.

Ok so time to take action here I replaced all my buckets, lines, and net pots. I poured straight bleach in my chiller after vacuuming all the water out and just let it sit for a day to sterilize it and did a straight h202 29% flush in the chiller before I rinsed it out and piped it back in so here we are lined up for round 3.

I wasn’t playing games with diseases this time so I did the pool shock @ 1g/gal running 2ml per gallon from the jump to try the sterile thing and everything was great until week 3 and boom my plants drop again from the same shit even with the pool shock.

Round 4 comes along I got rid of all the buckets and lines completely and built troughs lined with plastic and used wort chillers instead also brand new pumps so now I essentially have a giant dwc bucket lined with 6mm painters plastic and a wort chiller with a sub pump recirculating that way if any of this shit happens again changing everything to brand new is gonna cost like $70 and it can be done in 20 min. I also ditched the pool shock on this round. The new system is rolling and killing it until the 2nd week or so next thing you know that ugly yellow color creeped in overnight and the leaves look awfully droopy compared to the day before so I’m like no fucking way I’m stumped at this point I’ve been growing in these systems for a decade with no problems using this same nutrient recipe the same r/o water the same everything. Went back to google and found heisenberg tea and tried that with zero luck. The heisenberg tea didn’t do shit the roots just kept getting more and more brown and ugly by the day lol.

At this point I’m ready to just buy some ocean forest and just hang my gloves up in hydro because I’m losing money all over the place paying bills for crops that never made it but that ain’t my style I said fuck this I’m gonna back track and figure out where I’m going wrong. It’s obviously something I’m doing I got ahead of myself somewhere and tried to reinvent the wheel where I shouldn’t have.

Mind you I have two other friends growing in recirculating systems as well. One gave up because he dropped plants every single time and the other kept having roots browning off and dying plants as well but it was always in the later weeks of veg never from the start.

So I’m sitting there really thinking like ok maybe the sterile thing isn’t the answer because it didn’t help at all and neither is the tea because that turned the roots to shit for real. Both my friends keep having the same problem wtf is going on here.

Now this is the moment you have all been waiting for if you read this far....

What we ALL had in common was a bacterial slime and decay above the waterline when I started really investigating just like the OP mentioned that’s where the game changed and I figured it out.

My one friends problem was he transplanted his clones directly into the net pots still inside the neoprene cloner puck and filled the rest with hydroton and every one of his sick plants I investigated all had bad brown rotten decay and slime where the puck was it was like a bacterial hotel and resort all around the base of the plant and it spread all the way down but obviously got worse and worse the closer you got to the puck.

My other friend was lazy about topping his system off and use to let his water levels get pretty low and over the course of a week or two the whole area that was dry especially the top by the base would be covered in like a white / gray mold and dead decaying roots everywhere.

I personally came to the conclusion that my air pumps might be causing the pathogens to explode from the heat and what not a while back before this during all this trouble shooting so I actually ditched air pumps (with major success btw) and rolled my recirculating trough, wort chiller and recirculating sub pump design again this time with an aux sub pump that’s hooked up to a manifold that runs 1/4” drip lines into the net pot like I use to 10 years ago and brought hydro guard back into the game and low and behold I haven’t dropped a single plant since.

The problem was the infection over the waterline the entire time and I honestly believe if you are gonna do this style system you need to make sure there’s a steady flow of oxygenated water inoculated with hydro guard rolling over that base area 24/7.

I don’t use air pumps anymore so I have one sub pump that fires down at the end of the bucket 24/7 and pretty much free flows the water which makes the water ripple like a wave pool simulation or something and I believe that’s all that’s needed if you understand how the water pulls in o2 and how the whole d.o. thing works and one to pump nutes to the stem base 24/7 and I’m growing the happiest plants I’ve had in a long time.

Not only did the drip lines stop the rot from happening in the first place it also sped my veg up because the clones didn’t have to sit there and fight to get to the water they got hit with nutes immediately where they obviously wanted it and started taking off just like they use to and I forgot how vigorously my plants use to veg until I did this again and brought the top feed drippers back into the picture.

I hope I just helped someone too good luck.
 
highletter

highletter

12
3
So figured its about time to make a thread i can reference for those seeking a solution to root rot.

First let's go over some facts. Root rot is not temperature dependent there are many different types pythium that survive and thrive at various temps.

Second it is not caused by anaerobic conditions. However anaerobic conditions cause damage to the roots and make it more susceptible as will any plant that is unhealthy or stressed.

Root damage makes a plant very susceptible to pathogens so overly violent bubbling etc can actually do harm.

Use of either a sterile system or live system is a must in prevention. If your not doing one or the other you are very likely to have root issues.

Water level is important. I almost always see grower with an infection above the waterline. Contrary to popular belief you can run the net pot submerged (i dont). What is this madness Aqua Man you say? Let me explain...

So when we first introduce a plant to our systems they are generally started in a soil, starter plug of some kind etc. The roots are slightly different when grown in soil and water. As this plant grows thw roots that hit the water change in structure and adapt to being fully submerged. Once this happens you can raise the water up the net pot. However I don't do this. 1" below the net pot is where I stay. The bubbles breaking the surface will keep the root and net pot moist enough the prevent issue with damage from air pruning. Even notice the roots in the water are always brighter white? Thats why. If you are not getting the contact of the res solution to the roots above the water and in the hydroton then your not getting the beneficial bacteria, enzymes or h2o2 thier either and that were you see the infection start most times.

So next is the use of enzymes and bacteria. This is not only how we prevent but also cure root rot.

Enzymes will greatly help cleanup of the roots. Quickly eating up any root shedding or decay. This helps eliminate any food source for thw pythoum to take hold.

Beneficial bacteria... the specific species we are looking for is bacillus amyloliquefaciens D747. Several products on the market contain this. Raw bloom microbes, hydrogaurd, southern ag fungicide and plenty more. Counts may vary from what they list so I recommend hydrogaurd or southern AG fungicide. This bacteria species has been used for decades in big AG for exactly the same reason.... pythium, damping off, organic fungicide that actually works extremely well.

So we have root rot how do we get rid of it.

1. First you need the bacteria.

Southern AG fungicide should be used at 1 ml per 20 gal in hydro.

Hydrogaurd I believe is 2ml per gal.

2. take the plant in the netpot out of the system. You can put it in another pail of temp adjusted water.

Then do a full res change adding back the doses of bacteria i listed above.

3. Take the plant to the sink and use temp adjusted water and sprayer to rinse the roots. Massage them with your fingers gently. Don't be afraid to see some roots break off they are usually the most damage and decaying. Get every bit of slime off the roots as this is what suffocating the roots and is actually a mass of bacteria. The chlorine will aid in killing the pythium.

4 place the plant back into the fresh system. Then mix up a double dose of your bacteria with DISTILLED WATER. You want about 1 litre so can mix up 1 gal and that will last you the treatment. Pour i litre of this over the hydroton trying to cover everything. This is going to re inoculate the hydroton and roots in it and let the bacteria go to work.

5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 for 4 days. No matter how the roots look. Make sure each time to re inoculate the hydroton as you will be rinsing it each day so important to pour that litre over the top.

6. Now you should be in the clear and going forward your going to want to pour some res water once a week over thw hydroton to keep it inoculated and bonus rinse and salt buildup out.

Thats it... its that simple... and it works.
In step three. How exactly do you use chlorine? Do you have any specific brand or concentration recommendation? Thank you
 
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